Hi. I have a Ukulele. The action was very high so I decided to take off the nut and sand the bottom of it to make the action lower. My original plan was to do the same thing to the saddle (I don't know if thats how they call it on an acoustic, anyway its the white part of the bridge that can usually easily be removed on an acoustic because its not glued). I wasn't able to remove the saddle so I decided to put the strings back on to see what it would be like. The result was obvious: the action gets higher and higher as you go up the neck. Now this wouln't be that much of a problem. The new problem is that, even though the intonation wasn't great before, now it is aweful. On the top string, when played open and tuned to A perfectly, when playing at the 12th fret (which is the last fret of the instrument), the note, which should be A, is A#. I know by lowering the action at the bridge I most probably won't solve the problem completly, but for the string to be parallel to the neck, I need to lower the bridge approx. 3/32" (hmmm a little less than 1/8" but a little more than 1/16" anyway, I'm not very good with this system, I'm Canadian ). I can't sand the saddle down because I would have to sand it down completly and even then I wouldn't be low enough. Conclusion: I need to sand down the bridge, which is really thick (probably half an inch). So I need to remove it. How do I do this without damaging anything?
Once I sand it down a bit and reglue it I think the action will be better and also the intonation. I would still need a compensated saddle but I will deal with that later if I can at least get the intonation as good as it was before I lowered the nut.
Thanks,
joe